The contradictions of Richard Pryor—electrifying in concert films and Blue Collar, variously wasted, underutilized, or indifferent elsewhere—are on the mind of Colin Beckett too, who joins in Odienator’s applause for the underrated Bustin’ Loose. In the new issue of Brooklyn Rail, which also celebrates Jonas Mekas’s recent 90th birthday by soliciting salutes from some of his friends and collaborators, including P. Adams Sitney and Ken Jacobs.

“If Graf’s leading characters serve one overarching purpose, it is to consciously ferret out uncomfortable truths about the world they live in—a mission which notably requires some degree of complicity, corruption or maleficence along the way, as if only the partially corrupt can see the world’s real dirt.” For Daniel Kasman, the great revelation of the Rotterdam Festival was the retrospective on German director Dominik Graf, whose handful of features sit alongside hours of exemplary TV work.

“He covered the walls of his classroom with mottoes such as this: Student films come in three sizes: Too Long, Much Too Long and Very Much Too Long.” In tandem with an LA event, Artforum reprints Geoffrey O’Brien’s 2005 appreciation of Alexander Mackendrick. An excellent read regardless of vintage, marred only by a formatting glitch that, ironically regarding a filmmaker as formally precise as that quote indicates, has a plot summary for The Man in the White Suit jarringly transition mid-sentence into some biographical detail.

David Bordwell acknowledges that Theo Angelopoulos and Tony Scott seem about as discrete a pair of filmmakers you could name, but still finds a crazy sort of kinship in their shared “commitment to going beyond the given: Each director pushes his tradition to a limit.”

Viewing Kiarostami’s early films has Vadim Rizov noting how quickly he grew out of “miserablist cinema” and achieving transcendent moments.

Suspicious of Rooms Without Music or Atmosphere: Paintings by McDermott and McGough

“Yes, my films are all entertaining and in a way I make one mainstream film after the other…” “I wouldn’t really call you mainstream.” “My stories are wonderful and easy to understand and you can show them in Algeria, in Moscow, in Buenos Aires, all of them will understand it.” Werner Herzog, ever humble, interviewed at The Talks.

Video: In what’s evolved into a wildly eclectic gallery, Walt Disney now joins Gandhi, Galileo, Robert E. Lee, and Muybridge as the subject of a Philip Glass opera. “The Perfect American,” with libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer, premiered late last month at Madrid’s Teatro Real; for the next 90 days you can stream it (after a free registration) at Medici.tv. If you’ve been one of the tsk-tskers in any of the recent debates about historical accuracy in works of art, don’t even bother with this.

Obituary

Stuart Freeborn

Stuart Freeborn, the British make-up artist whose career spans from David Lean’s Oliver Twist (1948), where he created the exaggerated look of Fagin, to the Star Wars movies, passed away this week at the age of 98. His legacy creating the look for all three Peter Sellers characters in Dr. Strangelove, the proto-human apes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and most of the alien characters of the first three Star Wars films, including Chewbacca, Yoda, and Jabba the Hutt. More at The New York Times.

American stage and screen actor John Kerr, who co-starred with Deborah Kerr (no relation) in the 1956 Tea and Sympathy, passed away at the age 81. He effectively retired from acting to become a successful lawyer in the 1970s, but he continued taking occasional TV roles (including a recurring part on The Streets of San Francisco) through the 1980s. Garrett Lewis at The LA Times.

Not directly movie related, but Reg Pressly, the lead singer of the British sixties group The Troggs (knighted “the godfathers of punk” by Lester Bangs), died of lung cancer at the age of 71. Their most famous songs “Wild Thing” (which Pressly sang) and “Love Is All Around” (which he also co-wrote) have graced many a film. Dave Laing at The Guardian.

Seattle Screens

Don’t miss Tabu, Miguel Gomes’ magical dream-memory of life colonial Africa. “This curious and unexpectedly intoxicating concoction comes from director Miguel Gomes, who wants us to take our regular movie-watching habits and hold them up to scrutiny,” writes Robert Horton for The Herald. “Or maybe scrutinize our memories of our own lives and the way we can’t help but turn our old experiences into movies, more romantic than they really were.” Plays for two weeks at Northwest Film Forum.

Steven Soderbergh says that Side Effects is his last feature from before his retirement (he reserves the right to change his mind, of course). The medical thriller-turned-psychological thriller is like an updated Joe Esterhaus thriller from the nineties, only smarter, more clinically-focused (as Soderbergh is wont to do), and without the ice-picks. Robert Horton reviews it for The Herald. “After seeming to drift (in a cool, well-acted way) for half its running time, the film snaps into gear and goes into clockwork motion. We won’t recount any more plot here, but the prologue is re-visited and blood is spilled.” At area theaters.

“The Great Cinematic Clown Pierre Étaix” retrospective continues on Wednesday and Thursday with screenings of As Long As You’re Healthy (with the short Feeling Good, which was originally shot as a segment of Healthy but cut out by Étaix) and his debut feature The Suitor (with his hilarious debut short film Rupture). Read an overview of the series at Seattle Weekly here, and find showtimes and details here.

Valentines Day options on Thursday, February 14 include Harold and Maudeat The Uptown (I’m not sure how romantic that might play with your date) and the video anthology program VHSexat Grand Illusion (even more romantically dubious).

Also opening this week: Michael Apted’s 56 Up, the latest chapter in the most inspired documentary project to continue on for 50 years (Guild 45); We Don’t Care About Music Anyway, a documentary about Tokyo’s avant-garde music scene (Grand Illusion); Identity Thief with Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy (area theaters); and Top Gun 3D (IMAX theaters).

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Comments

Thanks Bruce for the nice shout-out to my teen movies piece in TRANSIT ! But you err in crediting the gathering of all the subsequent “Teen Moment” pieces to me. I translated some of them, but the editor on this project is the great critic Cristina Álvarez López, co-editor of TRANSIT ! Credit where it is due !!

Comment from Bruce ReidTime February 9, 2013 at 7:48 am

Amended, Adrian; apologies to the both of you for the error.

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